Just a brief warning of some mild violence with some implied sexual themes - other than that, enjoy!
School was a daily nightmare. Being the way I was, I found it easiest to keep my head down, work quietly, and leave the talking to other people. Not only was making friends exhausting, but it was also dangerous. They got too close, too personal, and I couldn't afford to let a thing slip. Not that I was particularly abnormal at home – I had friendly parents, two older siblings who I got on surprisingly well with, even a dog. Average house, average car, and on the front of it, an average life. But seeing everything from a perspective that was possibly alien to everyone else's was unnerving. What if some detail I thought normal was completely abstract and even threatening to another? What if that one thing led to a bigger mistake, and then another, until my secret lay unravelled for all to see and judge? It was too big a risk for me to take, especially considering how fraught the moment was, how it balanced on a knife's edge ready to plunge into chaos.
So I was good. Worked hard, took up very little space in class or in the minds of the teachers, kept my mouth stolidly shut in the face of taunts and mockery. And there was a lot of that; being quiet had the advantage of rendering you invisible without the aid of a mutation, but outside stood amongst your own classmates it only had the effect of making you stand out with painful clarity.
Loner, weirdo, mute, oddball, lockjaw. The names became familiar after a while, something I could greet with a weary acceptance, an identity I could slide into. Admittedly, through taking the brunt of the attack in meek silence, I'd expected my peers to get bored and leave me for some other poor soul, but if anything the abuse only got worse. It was like my reluctance to talk was a challenge, a blazing red flag to a bull. They would go further and further in their attempts to pierce my well-worn armour, and yet every time they would admit defeat with a sullen chagrin that would leave me glowing inside despite the fresh set of bruises.
And so it continued well into my teens. It was merely a routine to me now, and one that I unwillingly stuck to as the bullies got bigger, and the threats got meaner. Sometimes I would bite back, just to release a tiny scrap of all that pent up frustration, easing the pressure a little in the constant fear that one day I might explode, and my set life with it. And sometimes, on rare sunny days, it would work. Either way, I was, in a strange way, relieved for the cover the never-ending abuse lent to me, how being singled out as a loner somehow protected me from the dreaded classification of mutant.
Today was the day that all ended. I'm not sure why today of all days was the one in particular when I finally let go. It had been pretty average, with lessons in the morning running like clockwork, the ritual handing in of homework, a lunchtime sat alone behind a propped up book. Admittedly lunchtime had been quieter than usual, and people had seemed filled with a fervent electricity, a restlessness that spread through the canteen with a near-tangible intensity; doubtless some new nugget of gossip had been thrown to the hungry rabble, and I would have bet my every last penny that yet another mutant had been caught in the headlights. Poor bastard. Either way, I basked in the luxury of an hour all to myself, empty of the repetitive taunts and name-calling I'd been anticipating from over my shoulder.
The end of school, however, hadn't run quite as smoothly.
The moment I heard the hurried patter of footsteps behind me, I knew what was coming, and steeled myself, hastily bottling my stewing emotions in a steel box and plastering a look of blank indifference across my face that mustn't crack, no matter how hard they hit me.
The first blow was always the worst, sending me sprawling to the ground with all the air spent from my lungs. I gaped silently in an attempt to draw breath, scrabbling uselessly at the ground even though I knew there was no point in trying. I couldn't see how many there were with my face pressed into the tarmac; I would have guessed maybe a gang of five or six. That was the usual number.
A foot rammed into my side, hard, then again. By allowing myself to go limp, the worst of the pain was evaded, but it still drew an involuntary groan from the back of my throat. A hand twisted into my hair and yanked my head backwards so that I was forced to stare helplessly into a pair of sadistic blue eyes.
"Loner."
"Weirdo."
"Lockjaw."
"Nobody."
Inwardly, I sighed and sat back with arms folded, patiently waiting for the end that was sure to come. Externally, I remained a cold porcelain doll. Soon they would give up. More kicks were dealt; I was aware of my bag being torn from my back and beyond my sight being ripped and dirtied. Someone eagerly twisted my arm, so far and with such zeal I was surprised it didn't snap. Dimly I was aware of the low moans of pain such acts provoked, but it was like it was no longer my own body; I hovered above with my gaze fixed on the sky in a seemingly timeless world of my own where everything was shrouded in fog and glittering smoke. My skull held an infinity of possibility and creation, and it was my single most refuge, the peak that no one dared scale.
Eventually, the blows fell slower, and then came to a stop. I could barely feel my sides for the dizzying pain, and yet I remained motionless. My hair was released, my face thrown into the dirt with disgust. I drew a wheezy breath, half gasp of pain, but as my lips curled, half laugh. Distantly I heard myself whisper with unmistakable sarcasm, "Are we done here?"
A hand grabbed my shoulder and roughly threw me onto my back so that I was staring upwards into the faces of a group of guys about my age, perhaps four or five of them. I knew it. One of them crouched over me, the one with those dead blue eyes, only now they were laughing in a way that made my scalp prickle with dread. "You tell me, sweetheart," he rasped.
And then before I knew it, he had grabbed my face in one of his meaty hands, and forced my mouth to his.
This was new.
Get off. Get off, get off, get off. I tried to pull back with a mixture of shock and utter revulsion, but his friends were all around me, hands seizing my coat and hair, eager voices egging him on, laughing and leering as I struggled to break free. No one had been this close. No one. And no one had the right to ever be this close, to ever touch me as he was doing now. His hand was on my waist and travelling even lower, and all I wanted was for him to stop it, stop it right now. I wriggled, clawed frantically, bucking and juddering against iron-clad hands like a rabbit caught in a snare, but he only mashed his face further into mine.
And suddenly there was so much rage contained inside my head, so much pure anger and hatred seething within my skull so that I felt that I might burst. Heat raced through my blood, a fire that I hadn't felt in years, that I hadn't allowed myself to feel in my pretence of being normal. But now this monster had crossed a line, was touching me in ways that left me feeling exposed and violated, like my skin had been torn away for my very soul to be gawped at from between the ribs of its bone cage. So perhaps this once I was at liberties to cross my very own line.
Red blotches swam before my vision as I pulled back furiously, lashing out in any way possible much to the amusement of my audience. My skin grew warm, then hot, then boiling, thrumming with energy, the hairs along my arms rippling from the magnitude of it, far stronger than I could have possibly apprehended. All those years of isolation, of bullies and close-minded simpletons who had decided that the weak were to be their playthings. Only problem was, that they had picked the wrong victim. They had chosen someone who was strong.
For a moment I was enveloped in calm authority. And then I let go.
A wall of crackling blue, the distant ring of screaming in my ears, a warm tingle that played over my skin as the remaining energy fizzled and dissolved, melting back into the nothingness from which it had erupted.
Then... silence.
Slowly, I squinted through one eye, blinking hard in an attempt to see through the bright after-image tattooed on the backs of my eyelids. After a brief pause, I was able to sit up, and dazedly take in my surroundings.
Everything within several feet of me was charred and smoking. The boys had been thrown outside of my melted perimeter, and lay motionless, a few rolling over onto their sides to cough fitfully, or cry out in pain. Their ringleader's face was puffy and blistered, having borne the brunt of the attack, pus oozing from the more severe of the burns. At this distance, I thought – hoped, even - that perhaps I could see his chest rising and falling in shallow breaths, but it was hard to tell through the smoke-laden air.
Triumph was almost instantly overthrown by panic and guilt. What had I done? If anyone had seen, if a single soul should found out about my abilities, then I was as lost as the mutants in all those playground stories I heard. Never before had I lost control quite as violently; on one or two occasions, I'd been close, and sparks had visibly flown from my hands, but those were the easiest to hide under desks and sleeves. My mother would frown at the singed fabric later, but never questioned it. I was odd, but never abnormal.
But now I couldn't go back, not ever. Even as I climbed wincing to my feet, more of the boys began to roll around and groan, a few opening their eyes to squint through the murk. They would be able to guess, even if I was long gone before they properly came to their senses.
I hovered for a few precious seconds, still unsure of what to do, where to go, the guilt of what I'd done weighing me down like lead in my pockets.
"H... Help," one of the boys gasped to the sky. "Help."
The voice was enough to turn me around and send me limping for home, without a second look back.